GENETIC ECLIPSE

Prologue II: Hunted

By Yannick Lamarre

Author’s Note: This story is continued from Cable #7.

“This must have been one of the weirdest thing I’ve been through… and that’s saying a lot,” Kitty told Lockheed as she walked on her way home after meeting with Cable earlier that day.

Lockheed, looking up from Kitty’s specially modified handbag where the small dragon could fit, growled a question, which Kitty immediately translated, thanks to her years of dealing with Lockheed.

“Well,” she responded, “first he messes around with my thoughts without asking my permission, then he gets all weird and calls me ‘Cat’ and says I’m one of the Twelve, and went all violent on the Absorbing Man, crushing his legs in a horrible way…”

Lockheed suddenly snarled and Kitty looked down on him in surprise.

“What’s wrong, Lockheed?”

“Katherine Pryde,” a voice suddenly called from behind her.

Kitty twisted around in surprise, dropping her handbag down purposely to allow Lockheed to escape. Three persons stood before her, their eyes locked with hers, eyeing her carefully.

“Dani? What’s going on?” she asked, her gaze falling not on the former member of X-Force and the New Mutants, but on Tusk, a longtime member of the Dark Riders.

“Our master wants you, Shadowcat, and when the master commands, the Dark Riders obey!” Moonstar said defiantly. At that moment, Kitty knew she was in trouble.

Apocalypse wanted her.

The new Sam’s Electronics store, below Kitty’s new apartment, around the same time as Kitty’s confrontation with the Dark Riders.

“Rachel, could you help me out with this?” Sam Young asked his daughter as he came out of his office.

The store was still a few days away from its official reopening, and Sam was busy with the various preparations needed to make the store run right.

“Sure dad, what is it?” Rachel replied from the work table where she was working on various bills for the store.

He handed her a few pages of calculations, as well as notes from one of their suppliers.

“They say we made one of these wrong, and I can’t find the mistake,” the mid-fifties man explained.

Rachel quickly looked through the pages and took out one in particular, circling a few numbers with a pen.

“There. You forgot to add the taxes and refunds.”

Sam smiled proudly at his daughter and took the pages she handed him back.

“Thanks… oh, and Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“About what happened at Meli’s homecoming party?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rachel replied coldly, looking away from her father.

“I know, but… well… I just want you to know that if you need any help… you can…” he started to say.

“No! I don’t want any help!” Rachel suddenly screamed out, angry.

Sam, surprised at his usually shy and silent daughter’s reaction, took a step back, his eyes wide.

“I don’t have ANY problems! I’M JUST FINE!” she went on, rising from her chair and heading for the front door.

‘Not again,’ Sam thought sadly.

Without another word, Rachel opened the door and went outside, slamming the door hard as she went out.

“I should have kept my mouth shut,” Sam muttered to the silence in the shop.

“You really didn’t pick the right target!” Kitty told Trial, a member of the Dark Riders, as she phased through one of Hounds he had sent after her.

Trial’s hounds were a mix of Phalanx technology and the Sentinels used by Operation Zero Tolerance. Apparently, the technological part of the creatures didn’t appreciate Kitty’s phasing, as their systems short-circuited while she passed through them harmlessly.

‘This is madness,’ Kitty thought grimly as the Dark Riders chased her through the New York streets.

After the Dark Riders’ inital attack, which had caught her by surprise, she had chosen the better part of valor and had ran, her mind quickly analyzing ways to get her out of this. The Dark Riders weren’t about to let her go, that was for sure, and she couldn’t really fight them without putting the various innocents on the streets in danger.

“Trial was only a diversion, Kitty, so that I could do this!” she heard Moonstar’s voice from above her.

She’d ran into an alley, where the crown was thinner, but Kitty had also apparently run right into a trap. But as soon as she heard the voice she dove forward, concentrating to phase right through the street and into the sewer. She heard Moonstar land where she had been, cursing. So far, so good.

“Tusk, send your Tuskettes down there and draw her out. Trial, try and find some way we can locate her even as she’s phased,” Moonstar ordered her troops.

“Right, boss,” Tusk said, producing a few Tuskettes and opening a sewer hole.

The Tuskettes went down, trying to locate Kitty in the sewers, but even as they did so Kitty was already on her way up, spotting Moonstar from inside the building she had phased into.

‘She’s the first one I have to get rid of,’ Kitty realized as she watched her in action. ‘She knows me, and seems to be leading these guys.’

Trial wasn’t posing much of a threat to her at this point, since she could easily destroy any electronic equipment he’d throw against her. Tusk wasn’t a problem as long as he didn’t catch her unawares with one of his Tuskettes. The only one who could harm Kitty was Moonstar.

Kitty waited until Tusk himself went down into the sewers to chase her, and Trial was seemingly busy trying to find ways to locate her while phased before moving again. Moonstar seemed to be reporting to someone using a communication device. Now was the time to act. She walked through the wall, straight into the building behind which Moonstar was standing and then went down between levels into solid concrete. She estimated how far Moonstar was and walked that distance, coming up right behind her before she could do anything about it. Kitty reached out and tapped into Moonstar’s nervous systems, and short-circuited it, knocking out her old friend.

“I’m sorry, Dani…” she whispered as Trial came down on her.

“Tusk, she’s here!” he screamed as he sent two strange globes after her.

They were firing lazers which tingled when they passed through her. They had to be pretty powerful to cause such an effect. Tusk suddenly came crashing up from the sewers, breaking pipe lines and tons of concrete to try and surprise her. Unfortunately for him, Kitty was still phased and passed harmlessly through him and his Tuskettes.

‘I can’t stay here,’ Kitty thought as she ran again. ‘I can’t go to the mansion either. After what happened last time, and with the way he treated Warren, there’s no way Charles will take me in. I have to make it to Chicago…’

In the old days, she would have called Psylocke to get an instant teleport, but she’d been kicked off the team. Now she had to find some way to get there as fast as possible. The answer came suddenly and she said it out loud in relief.

“Warren’s private jet! It’s stationed at the airport!”

Kitty looked behind her to see if the Riders where still following. Apparently she’d managed to put some distance between them and her. She took a deep breath and unphased, hailing a cab. One soon stopped, and she was on her way to the airport.

Melissa Heartridge was sitting at her table, looking hopefully at her parents as they checked out the apartment she was now living in with Kitty. Melissa didn’t keep her hopes too high. Her parents had both been against the move in the first place, especially after the ‘accident’ which had landed her in a wheelchair a week ago.

“Well, this place is smaller than your home,” her father, John Heartridge, finally said, sitting down in front of her.

“Yes, and not in a safe neighborhood either,” her mother, Odetta Heartridge, added, taking position beside her husband.

Melissa sighed and shook her head in disapointment.

“I should’ve known better then to think you would treat this place fairly…” Melissa replied, rolling away from the table and towards the fridge.

She hated the wheelchair. It made her look diminished, but it wasn’t really that much of a major injury. She would be out of it soon, in a week or two, luckily. In the meantime, it didn’t help her case with her parents. She felt their gaze on her back as she took out cold water and poured herself a glass.

“Where is the girl you’re living with anyway? She should be helping you while you’re… like this,” John finally said as Melissa was returning to the table.

“She’ll be here soon. She said she just had someone to meet and that she’d be back in time to meet you guys,” Melissa explained, but she didn’t look in her dad’s face as she said it.

Melissa was starting to worry about Kitty. She’d told Melissa that she’d be there an hour before her parents arrived, and it was now half an hour past that. What was keeping her?

“Well, I knew she’d be unreliable the instant I saw her at the hospital!” her mother complained.

Melissa groaned and looked at the clock.

‘Kitty, hurry home, I need a break from this…’

Of course, the airport was crowded, slowing her down. Normally she’d just phase through the crowd, but that’d cause a panic, and if Kitty wanted Warren’s plane to be allowed to lift off, she’d have to play this casually. She made her way to the information booth, where a smiling employee answered her.

“Yes? How can I help you?” she asked in a pleasant manner.

Kitty looked nervously behind her, then looked back at the lady.

“Yes, one of my friends, Warren Worthington III, has a private jet here, and I’d like to be allowed to use it. I believe I’m on the list of people he gave you who can do that without needing a pilot. My name’s Katherine Pryde,” Kitty quickly explained.

“Let me check that…” the woman replied, and got busy at her computer.

Kitty looked behind her again, but there wasn’t anything in the crowd which looked suspicious. Had she really lost them?

“Your plane is ready to fly on lane one-hundred two, Miss Pryde. Have a good flight,” finally came the answer.

“Thanks,” she said, darting off for the entrance to Lane 102.

She had made her way to the deserted boarding line of her flight, and sighed when she saw the plane waiting for her. She could easily board and be on her way.

“Stop right there, Shadowcat! You’re not going anywhere!” said a voice behind her.

Kitty froze as she felt the tip of a sharp weapon behind her back. There was a tint of metal in the man’s voice. Trial.

“You do realize I can phase out of this situation anytime I wish to,” she warned.

“I’m betting my energy blade can…” he started to say.

Kitty didn’t hesitate. Getting him talking to distract him was all she needed. She phased and jumped backwards, right through Trial and his blade, short-circuiting all of his built-in circuitry, causing him to yell out in pain and fall to his knees, totally harmless now. Kitty instantly ran for the airplane, knowing that Tusk probably wasn’t far behind. So far so good; she’d managed to bring down two out of three Dark Riders on her own.

‘Either Apocalypse is getting sloppy, or I’m getting way better than I hoped,’ she thought with some pride.

A few minutes later, Warren’s private jet was in the sky and heading for Chicago.

Barely an hour later, in Chicago and heading towards the Worthington Estate, Kitty was still nervously looking through the windows of a cab, searching for any signs of the Dark Riders.

‘Calm down, Kitty, you’re almost there, you’ve made it. No need to worry…’ she kept telling herself.

“So, lady, you in trouble or something?” the cabbie asked, looking back to stare at her.

“Nothing I can’t deal with,” she lied.

She knew that if Apocalypse was after her, it was more then she should handle on her own. But at least she’d managed to escape the Dark Riders alone… and that was something.

“Glad to hear that, missy,” the driver replied, returning his attention to the road.

Kitty sighed when the cab finally turned on the street leading directly to the Estate.

“What the…?!”

The driver never had time to finish as the cab suddenly hit something right in the middle of the road, except the thing they hit never moved. Kitty barely had time to phase as the cab completely crashed against the object. She was catapulted out of the cab, but didn’t really hurt herself. Kitty looked up in time to see Tusk walking over the crashed taxi and heading towards her. That’s when she felt the impact behind her head as one of Tusk’s Tuskettes crashed into her from behind. She collapsed to the ground, disoriented.

“End of the line, girl,” Tusk said, approaching her.

“No…” she moaned out, trying to remain conscious.

Luckily for her, that’s when the cab exploded, taking Tusk by surprise. The force of the explosion was strong enough to send him tumbling off his feet, landing a few feet away from Kitty. Using what remained of her strength, Kitty got back to her feet and started to painfully run toward the X-Men’s headquarters. She threw a quick look at the cab to see if the driver had made it out, but couldn’t see anything in the blaze. Either he was dead in the cab, or he had jumped out before it had exploded.

She went on running as people started to rush in the streets to see what had caused the explosion. The Estate was getting nearer and nearer, and there were no Dark Riders left to stop her. She’d made it. She’d made it…

“You have defeated my Dark Riders, and thus have proven that you are indeed one of the strong. But this game has lasted long enough,” came a booming voice right behind her.

Her head was throbbing, conscious thoughts quickly becoming hard to form. She just knew that she had to go on. She ignored the voice and kept on running. The next thing she knew she was thrown off her feet and into a wall by some force beam. She landed hard, and red liquid started filling her eyes, keeping her from seeing right.

“You have been chosen well by the Askani’son. The fact that you have lasted this long proves that. But now it’s over. Apocalypse has come for you, and there’s nothing else you can do but fall…” the voice went on.

She felt another blow, and the sense of being picked up by someone. She had been so close…

The last thing she thought before falling unconscious was that she should have radioed ahead from the plane…

Read Uncanny X-Men #14 & Apocalypse #8 for parts 1-2 of Genetic Eclipse!

NEXT ISSUE: Genetic Eclipse Part 3! Kitty’s been abducted by Apocalypse, and he wants answers to his questions… answers Kitty isn’t even sure she knows. But even as she’s being tortured, she learns clues to his dark plans… and what being one of the Twelve means!